Colorado store makes history as first to offer recreational marijuana in the US

A small store in Central City, Colorado has made history by becoming the first establishment in the US to be granted a license to sell recreational marijuana.

Annie’s Central City Dispensary, located in a city founded during
the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush, posted on social media earlier this
week that its license application had been approved. It will be
among the first shops in Colorado to begin selling marijuana on
January 1, 2014, more than a year after Colorado residents voted
to legalize use of the drug for persons 21 and over.

The state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division has accepted 136
applications from recreational marijuana stores so far. Another
400 are eligible to apply, though the state has said only
establishments in “good standing” will be accepted.

“Cannabis is one of the fastest-growing industries,” Steve
Berg, former managing director of Wells Fargo Bank and editor of
a report titled the state of Legal Marijuana Markets, told the
Huffington Post. “Domestically, we weren’t able to find any
market that is growing as quickly.”

All of which makes it difficult for many people to understand why
the Drug Enforcement Agency continues to launch raids on
businesses that have been accepted by the community. Like
Colorado, voters in Washington State have also voted to legalize
recreational marijuana.

Yet the drug remains illegal on the national level and, because
federal law trumps state law, federal police agencies like the
DEA are technically permitted to harass and intimidate retail and
medical pot dispensaries. US President Obama and Attorney General
Eric Holder have both said repeatedly that federal police
agencies would respect state law, a promise that has been
continuously broken since 2009.

At the same time, authorities in Colorado have conducted the
largest raid on dispensaries since medical marijuana became legal
Thursday, with officers executing search and seizure warrants at
more than 12 stores in the Denver area alone. Masked agents broke
windows and confiscated products from medical marijuana
dispensaries that customers rely on to cope with cancer and other
serious ailments.

“Although we cannot at this time discuss the substance of this
pending investigation, the operation under way today comports
with the Department’s recent guidance regarding marijuana
enforcement matters,” Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the US
Department of Justice, told the Denver Post.

He added that the DEA, Internal Revenue Service criminal
investigations unit, Denver Police Department, and local law
enforcement agencies were involved in the operation. Dorshner
said that while investigators could not comment on the matter,
there were indications the targeted dispensaries violated an
August Justice Department memo outlining the activities would
work to prevent. Those conditions include:

• the distribution of marijuana to minors;

• revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal
enterprises, gangs and cartels;

• the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal under
state law in some form to other states;

• state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover
or pretext for the trafficking of other illegal drugs or other
illegal activity;

• violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and
distribution of marijuana

• drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public
health consequences associated with marijuana use;

• growing of marijuana on public lands and the attendant public
safety and environmental dangers posed by marijuana production on
public lands;

• preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property.

Washington is scheduled to begin selling recreational marijuana
by mid-2014. Until then, with a number of states considering
similar legislation, all eyes will remain on what has become the
Colorado experiment.

“Entrepreneurs and private investors are flocking to cannabis
markets,” Berg, the former Wells Fargo director, said.
“Those who really understand market dynamics will reap large
rewards.”